I don't have feelings, I AM feelings.

Enough is Enough: Terrorism in America

Last night my phone blew up just as I was going to sleep. There had been another mass shooting. This one in Lafayette, Louisiana.

After the previews, John Russel Houser stood up, turned to his fellow audience members, and opened fire. As of right now, reports are of two dead and eight wounded. Houser, of course, killed himself after perpetrating the act.

What happened last night in Louisiana was nothing less than an act of terror carried out against innocent people.

The question is, how long are we as a country going to let this shit go on?

So far this year, there have been 204 mass shootings in the United States. Mass Shooting Tracker (i.e., the most depressingly relevant web site ever to exist) defines a mass shooting as an incident “when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.” These shootings, it should be noted, do not have to involve a death to be added to the list. That said, 204 is a completely unacceptable number.

204.

204 shootings.

This is unacceptable.

Houser last night stood up, calmly, in the middle of the theater, and simply unloaded his gun into the crowd in an act of blatant terrorism.

Ten dollars says that the gun he owned was purchased legally. They are already saying that he had a criminal record, but that it was quite old. So he may have been able to purchase the gun legally depending on the type of crimes he had previously committed.

It is worth noting at this point that he has not been characterized by the mainstream media as a “thug.” Nor even as a terrorist. They are calling him “shooter” and “gunman.” They are white washing his crime with words that are not meant to incense the public emotionally. They describe him so far as a man from Alabama who had “no known connection to Louisiana.” We haven’t seen his previous mug shots. They aren’t speculating on his possible mental health. Dealing with crimes committed by white people in this country is a surgical procedure. Everything is carefully named and processed and handle

As opposed to when a black person commits a crime in this country At which point the investigators and reporters play Jackson Pollock with the facts.

Governor Jindal of Louisiana said last night that what we can do is “pray” and “hug these families.” How about we do more than that? How about we work on reforming gun legislation in this country so that this shit never happens again? Because if you’re not doing that, your fucking hugs don’t mean jack shit.